This is the third part of a review of David Berner’s Any Road Will Take You There. Click here to read the first part.

Before I wrote the first draft of my memoir, I visualized my past as a tangled web. When I gathered random anecdotes and placed them in chronological order, they began to connect, making it easier to see how one thing led to another. The next breakthrough came in critique groups where I learned that readers want to know more than the sequence of events. They want to know what I’m thinking.

Introspection is such an important feature in memoirs that a memoir without this dimension feels as if it is skimming the surface. By adding the mental track, the author does for memoirs what a good sound track does for movies. In both cases, the sound we hear helps us relate to what we see. The analogy with a movie sound track highlights a fundamental principle of all storytelling – a good story operates on two planes, inner and outer.

To feel engaged in any story, we need to understand the motivations of the characters. However, because our predominant cultural stories are formulaic, we often forget about this inner dimension. In thrillers, the good guys naturally want to chase the bad guys and bad guys naturally fight back. Similarly, in mysteries the detective needs to solve the crime, and in romances, the girl needs to get the guy. We don’t need to know much about the inner dimension in these stories because we assume they are roughly about the same every time.

Memoirs are about real life. We grow up, start a family, get a job, grow older, take a trip. Meanwhile, inside the protagonist of a memoir, all hell is breaking loose. Our search for love, dignity and understanding can become so vast, it seems to fill the sky. Memoirs provide insight into the characters’ deepest dreams and needs, and they achieve this effect with carefully crafted, cleanly integrated thoughts.

When Memoir Characters Need to Think a Lot
I am intimately familiar with the importance of thinking my way through major life transitions. When I attempted to pass through the gateway from child to adult, I struggled for years to think my way across the chasm. In fact, the working title of my memoir is Thinking My Way to the End of the World. So when I read memoirs, I take special note of the way the author reveals his or her inner process. Two recent examples illustrate the way memoir authors successfully include their thoughts.

When Cheryl Strayed was attempting to transition from girl to woman, she underwent a process of self-reevaluation. Her memoir, Wild, is about her attempt to do that reevaluation while taking a hike. The memoir on the surface is about a hike through the wilderness. Cheryl Strayed entices readers to turn the page to experience the trappings of her hike: blistered feet, fear of getting lost, heavy backpacks, and encounters with fellow hikers. But inside her mind, she is free to ramble, consider the past, and have inner discussions about the direction of her life.

Readers didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that her outer circumstances had little to do with her inner ones. The book was an acclaimed bestseller even before it appeared on the big screen, demonstrating that readers are interested in an author’s inner dimension and willing to go along for the inner ride.

Memoir author David Berner also needed to share a thoughtful life transition. In his first memoir, Accidental Lessons, he describes the meltdown that provoked him to leave his family and start a new life. In his second memoir, Any Road Will Take You There, he returns to that decision to leave, and tries to figure out how to maintain his responsibility to his children. To reconcile the opposing parts of his desire, to leave and yet to remain loyal, he needs to think long and hard about responsibility, about his relationship to the boys, and about his father’s relationship to him.

To do all of this thinking, David Berner takes his sons and a buddy on a drive in a motor home. They roughly follow the path described by Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road. Each day a little more road passes under their wheels in perfect, chronological sequence. And as the miles go by, the boredom of travel invites introspection.

David Berner’s journey is less complex or picturesque than a hike through the wilderness. Reminiscent of Jack Kerouac’s book, On the Road, this simple outer journey provides just enough forward momentum to keep readers engaged, while the much more dramatic story takes place inside his mind.

Occasionally one of Berner’s two sons says or does something that triggers a round of musing. Within each of these reveries, time moves more fluidly, leaping from one generation to another, like the point-counterpoint of jazz riffs, in which motifs intertwine, never going too far into one before the other intervenes, giving endless opportunities for contrast. Reconciling his inner conflicts, and figuring out how to renew his connection to the boys creates intense thoughts, written artfully in micro-essay, musing style.

These weren’t flashbacks. In a flashback, the reader must leap backward, and shift focus to a previous time frame. At the end of a flashback, the reader must leap forward again into the timeframe of the storyteller. This can create a jarring effect. On the other hand, David Berner’s musings comment on the past without actually returning to it.

Here’s an example to illustrate what I mean. Berner is deciding whether or not to buy a memento on this trip. From there he remembers the emotional importance of travel in his life. The following paragraph explores this thought in greater depth.

“When I was a kid, the shortest family vacation would mean at least a cheap tee-shirt or salt water taffy to carry home for a cousin or the neighbor who took in the mail. And when my mother and father traveled to England to find the boyhood home of my grandfather, my mother’s dad, they returned with inexpensive fisherman sweaters and coasters with pictures of Westminster Abbey. My sons visited Abbey Road Studios with their mother on a European holiday, and their gift to me was a single white guitar pick. I loved that gift.”

After the introspective moment plays out, we look up and see we have traveled further on the road and the outer storyline picks up again. This alternating play between interior thought and exterior travel creates an almost musical rhythm.

How to use outer circumstances as the video for your own inner sound track
Both Cheryl Strayed and David Berner offer examples of the way a simple trip, from beginning to end, can be used as an opportunity to explore their inner lives. Each author faces an important life transition, to grow into adulthood, or to adjust to the changing landscape of middle age. The authors take us on a journey, during which we listen to their hearts and minds.

Their examples illustrate something all memoirs have in common. In the world of action, circumstances are unfolding. At the same time, inside the character, a series of thoughts and reactions play out, usually triggered by the external events. The events provide the visual framework. And the thoughts and musings offer readers a sound track.

If you wonder if your life transitions were interesting or important enough to write about, consider these two memoirs. In one, a girl is attempting to become a woman. In the other, a middle-aged man is attempting to renew his responsibility to his sons. What could be more ordinary? And yet, through the artful interplay of outer circumstance and inner response, we feel ourselves pulled into their lives. By the end of the journey, we have been enriched by the thoughts, ideas, and images that helped these authors adjust to great changes in their world views, and to adapt to new chapters in their lives.

Writing Prompt
What transition or challenge in your life required you to rethink your self-image?

What set of external circumstances unfolded while you were attempting to come to this inner shift?

In the memoir Ten Speed, author Bill Strickland figures out his own deepest secrets while on a bicycle. He desperately needs to review his life in order to shake off the legacy of his father’s abuse, so he can fully love his daughter. Click here to read my article about Ten Speed.

Coming Soon: a list of memoirs I have read (or in some case previewed) by authors who have written more than one.

For brief descriptions and links to all the posts on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my book Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.

This is the second part of a review of David Berner’s Any Road Will Take You There. Click here to read the first part.

In Accidental Lessons, David Berner’s first memoir, a middle-aged man looks for himself in the wider world. From one point of view, it’s the classic midlife abandonment, leaving his wife and kids. But there’s a twist. Instead of running away from responsibility, he takes a job as a school teacher and helps students grow.

David Berner’s second memoir, Any Road Will Take You There, seems to follow a similar thread. Again, he leaves home to find meaning. But again, Berner is not exactly running away. This time he hits the road, but in a motor home. And he takes his sons with him.

The characters in Any Road Will Take You There are supposedly following the path of the beat generation of fifty years earlier, when young rebels flaunted the values of society. But during this updated version, a middle-aged man celebrates social responsibility. By taking his sons along for the ride, Berner attempts to inspire them with the same book that inspired him in his youth. Passing along social values to one’s sons is the very definition of “tradition” and a fabulous sendup of Jack Kerouac’s rebellion. The interplay of the two forces, running away and returning, creates fascinating harmonics.

Within the container of the road trip, Berner is able to ponder the rebelliousness of his youth, and place those youthful impulses within the context of his mid-life crisis. With each passing mile, he moves farther and farther into his commitment to his children. Instead of renewing his commitment to self-indulgence, the way mid-life crises are expected to do, Berner renews his commitment to care for others.

Leaving Home is Only the First Half of the Hero’s Journey
According to Joseph Campbell’s influential book, Hero of a Thousand Faces, the story of the young warrior leaving home to find his place in the world is at the heart of civilization. Campbell finds some variation of this image of “going forth” in every culture on earth.

This desire to find truths somewhere else is not just ancient history. In modernity we continue to travel outward as if our lives depend on it. That spirit drove Europeans west across the American frontier. Jack Kerouac updated the image to a new generation. On the Road was like a starter pistol that launched ten thousand cars. When I drove to San Francisco in 1969, I was not simply looking for good weather. By rejecting my parents’ values, and even their presence in my life, I was following this exciting idea — find truth by abandoning everything you know and believe.

A decade later, most of us former hippies figured out how to establish our adult lives. To do so, we had to reconcile an important flaw in our idealism. By leaving everything behind we had fostered a valueless, chaotic society. But how had we been so misled by the universal myth of the hero? Surely a fundamental guideline of human experience couldn’t have been so out of kilter.

At the time, I couldn’t make sense of how far off track I’d gone, but I kept asking the question. Now, the Memoir Revolution is providing answers. When David Berner looks back across his life, the outward bound passion of our youthful rebellion is shown in a new light. David Berner and other middle-aged chroniclers of the social experimentation of the sixties are helping us update the Hero’s Journey to the twenty first century. Or more accurately, we are rediscovering that the Hero’s Journey has contained that deeper wisdom all along.

It turns out that by celebrating the “going forth” part of the Hero’s Journey, modern cultures have been glossing over the crucial outcome of the Hero’s Journey. At the end of the classic story, the hero returns home. As a returned adventurer, the ultimate goal of the hero is not to conquer the unknown. In the next leg of the journey, the goal is to bring back wisdom to share with the community. In its complete form, the Hero’s Journey is about building and sustaining communities.

David Berner’s memoir Any Road Will Take You There reminds us of this necessary completion of the Hero’s Journey. He springboards from Kerouac’s image of leaving home, but Berner’s variation on this journey has a wonderful twist. He exposes mid-life, not as a time to leave home, but as a time to reevaluate and renew his commitment to his community. As a teacher to his students and his sons, Berner reminds us that the hero’s journey ends with wisdom that will help maintain social values and raise responsible children.

Mid-life crisis corrected
In middle age, it’s natural to fear the whispers of one’s own mortality. As long as our culture only values the “going forth” half of the Hero’s Journey, these fears might prod us to renew our youthful attempt to leave everything, as if by going outward we can become heroes again. But by prolonging the adventuresome half of the journey, we miss the reward offered to us throughout the history of civilization. Instead of going out again, we can find peace and fulfillment by accepting the call to return.

David Berner’s story offers us that image. Instead of focusing on the first half of the Hero’s Journey, he glorifies the second. By returning to his children, and the students in his school, he offers his wisdom to young people so that they can live wiser lives, themselves.

The story of Any Road Will Take You There is seductively simple. Rent a van and go on holiday. However, Berner’s apparently simple send up of On the Road creates a complex backdrop. His first memoir Accidental Lessons adds even more context. Through his two memoirs, the author transforms his midlife crisis into a meditation about generations, about the responsibilities of fathers, about the power of literature to transform individual lives.

On The Road was Jack Kerouac’s roman a clef, that is a novel based on the adventures of one of the great reporters of the Beat Generation. David Berner has done an excellent job updating that message with a true life message of his own. By writing his memoir, Berner compares the “going forth” of the Beat movement in the sixties with the “return home” of the Memoir Revolution in the twenty-first century. In our era, we can complete the cycle: grow up, learn about the world, then by writing a memoir, bring our wisdom to the next generation.

For another memoir about an idealistic response to midlife, read Janet Givens At Home on the Kazakh Steppe about a woman who volunteered for a Peace Corps stint at age 53. Click here for Janet Givens’ home page.

Click here for a list of memoirs I have read by authors who have written more than one.

For brief descriptions and links to all the posts on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my book Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.

I met David Berner in the pages of his first memoir, Accidental Lessons, so reading his second memoir Any Road Will Take You There feels like hanging out with an old friend. The second memoir turned out to be quite different from the first, so in addition to the pleasure of spending a few more hours with this kind, thoughtful man, I was fascinated to read about him from such a different perspective. The two memoirs together spin a multi-layer tale that offers interesting insights — into the man and into the memoir genre’s potential for rich literary value.

In the first memoir, Accidental Lessons, Berner, terrified that his life is superficial, quits his job and separates from his wife. The cliché of midlife suggests a man running away from responsibility and trying to live out his childhood. However, Berner doesn’t follow that hackneyed model. He takes a job teaching at a school in an under-privileged neighborhood. To find his new self image, he attempts to help other young people find theirs.

Accidental Lessons is framed within his year as a new teacher, a position that is accompanied with a bit of humiliation. While other teachers have been doing it for years, he is a total novice. He teaches his young students how to prepare for life, and at the same time, he is learning similar lessons. By the end, he’s starting to get the hang of it.

His story structure, bracketed within the rhythm of a school year, is a perfect canvas on which to paint a journey. But I didn’t fully appreciate Berner’s cleverness in finding a good wrapper for a memoir until I read his second book.

Sequel Does Not Simply Follow Chronologically
Many second memoirs simply follow the chronological sequence, picking up where the first one left off. For example, Frank McCourt’s first memoir Angela’s Ashes was about growing up in Ireland and his second memoir ‘Tis was about becoming an adult in New York. Carlos Eire’s first memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana was about his childhood during the Cuban Revolution. Despite Carlos Eire’s fascinating experiments with flashbacks and flashforwards, in essence his second memoir, Learning to Die in Miami is a sequel to his first, mainly about his attempt to survive as an orphan in the United Stated.

However, David Berner’s second memoir, Any Road Will Take You There, does not simply continue the journey of the school teacher. Instead, the second memoir jumps to a different model altogether. In the second memoir, he rents an RV and takes a road trip with his two sons and an old buddy. The small troupe drives along the same route Jack Kerouac’s characters travel in the landmark book On the Road.

Kerouac’s book, published in 1957, foreshadowed the counterculture of the 1960s and inspired many young men to hit the road and find their truths somewhere other than home. It certainly exerted a profound influence on young David Berner. In Any Road Will Take You There, he tries to pass this literary inspiration to his sons. So the outer story is the road trip itself. And that deceptively simple storyline provides a backdrop on which he paints a complex inner journey.

Because the road trip gives him time to think, the memoir turns into a meditation. Through mini-essays disguised in reveries, Berner explores the relationship of fathers and sons through three generations. And by contrasting his road trip with Jack Kerouac’s he offers new insight into the meaning of the Beat Generation fifty years later. I’ll say more about these deeper dimensions of the memoir in the second and third parts of this review.

Lesson for Memoir Writers
In addition to its artistically brash move to a new structure, Berner’s second memoir contains an interesting clue for writers who wonder. “How much backstory should I include in my memoir?”

The first memoir, Accidental Lessons, provides a wonderful example of a memoir that includes hardly any backstory. He jumps right into his crisis, without saying much about his earlier life. Even though the memoir offers very little backstory about Berner’s previous life, it offers fabulous backstory for David Berner’s second memoir. By reading the first, you gain insight into the character in the second.

The fact that Berner branched out into an entirely different model for his second memoir is a tribute to his commitment to the genre. Each book is excellent in its own right, and together they offer valuable lessons for memoir writers. First, you don’t need to be limited by any one model, and second the road might be longer than you think. There may be a sequel in there waiting to be told.

Writing Prompt
Does your story have enough complexity to break it into two parts? If so, describe the story arc of each of the two parts. How would the first part provide backstory for the second?

This is the first part of a series about David Berner’s memoir Any Road Will Take You There. For the second part, click here.

Another author who writes memoirs in different structures is Sue William Silverman. Her first memoir I Remember Terror Father Because I Remember You was a Coming of Age story. Her recent memoir (her third) is Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew in which she embeds parts of her adult life in stories in a pop culture style.

Coming Soon: a list of memoirs I have read (or in some case previewed) by authors who have written more than one.

For brief descriptions and links to all the posts on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my book Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.

In this final section of our interview, I ask David W. Berner to share more about writing his memoir, “Accidental Lessons.” Questions in this part of the interview dig in to the choices he made when constructing the book.

Beginning of the memoir

Jerry Waxler: In my experience, one of the hardest parts of finishing a memoir is to review the structure and decide exactly how to begin, so I am always curious about the way authors start their stories. I find yours especially intriguing. You start with the breakup of your marriage, and then you backfill, providing the back-story through reflection. I like the way the book is structured, and I’m trying to understand what made you pick this beginning. If it was me, I would have been tempted to start the book while you were still a newscaster, and then show how that world began to fall apart.

So how did you arrive at the particular structure that you published? What other ways did you consider? Help me understand your experience of wrestling with this structure. Was it daunting to pick one, and not do the others? If so, how did you come to peace with that decision?

David Berner: My first couple drafts were far more linear in nature – this happened, then that, then that. Frankly, that sort of story structure bores me a bit. Life is not linear. Sure, the clock ticks away in one direction, but during that time we all reflect, stop and think, try to recreate old times and invent new times. At the risk of sounding too existential, I wonder if there were no such thing as a clock, time as we know it, would life be linear?

As mentioned before, my original first chapter was not the first chapter that ended up in the book. So I did play around with different ways to let the story unfold. But essentially, the structure was based around the school year, so starting with a startling moment in that school seemed natural.

Although I played around with the structure a bit, I did not consider major, 180-degree flips in the storyline. Frankly, you can make yourself crazy as a writer considering what you could do, or should do, or could try. Sure, adjustments, many times big ones have to be made. But fixing, adjusting, editing, shaping will become a never-ending ritual if you let it. At some point you have to say – this is it, this is what I’m going with, this seems to get the job done. Trust it and believe in it.

Ending of the memir

Jerry Waxler: I love the way the school year provides you with a natural frame of reference that can help you tell the story, and helps me read it. How did you choose this framework, and how did you decide where to end it?

David W. Berner: The structure seemed a natural to me. The school year framed the story and acted as a bookend, you might say. I had that in mind all along. It’s just that I wanted the all-important reflection to come within that framework, not be somehow transported out of it. I also think because the story is not completely linear, that framework of the school year helps the reader stay on track.

Through every draft, the ending was always the ending. That email that is tacked on my wall, the one I reference in the epilogue of the book, is still there above my desk. It reminds me daily of that very special year and those students, and renews my commitment to teaching every time it gets shaky, and yes, there are times it gets quite shaky. I hope the reader would finish the book with the belief that although our past may be gone through the passage of time, it has left an indelible mark, a branding on all of us. And we should not dismiss it even when it’s painful or troubling; we should embrace it, use it to our advantage, and savor it until it becomes a memory that can be used as fuel to move us along in our lives. My mother always used to say, “It’s not what happens to you, it is how you deal with what happens to you.” I think that message comes through in Accidental Lessons.

Jerry Waxler: What are you writing next?

David Berner: I’m the Writer-in-Residence at the Jack Kerouac Project in Orlando this summer, and absolutely honored and humbled to have been awarded this time at Kerouac’s old apartment in the College Park neighborhood. The room where I’m writing is Jack’s old room. Maybe you don’t believe in these sorts of things, but there’s an energy in that room I hope I can bottle. It’s where he wrote The Dharma Bums, a book like all his others that was creative nonfiction before there was creative nonfiction. His work was always autobiographical, a memoir hybrid, I might call it. I’m hoping to complete a first draft and begin a second on another memoir while I’m here, this one based on a road trip I took with my sons. It’s really a father-son story, reflecting on all the men who came before me in that long line of fatherhood and how what they did well, and not so well, resonates in the generational DNA.

Jerry Waxler: Before you wrote Accidental Lessons, you were a newscaster. What sort of writing, did you do for your work?

David W. Berner: A big part of my journalism background was a radio news anchor and a reporter. I was fortunate enough to have won some awards and was more well known through my reporting work than anchoring. My editors always told me I could paint the best mind-pictures. I used that as a jumping off point for my writing. But it didn’t come easily. I had to work at it. I got a D in English Composition my freshman year of college. I hope I’ve improved.

Most of the writing was Associated Press style broadcast writing, but I eventually began to put more of my own, personal observations in my work. Not opinion, but more description. I stayed with a simple style, and I ALWAYS read my manuscripts out loud when I edited. Not only because I came from the audio work, but because I think writing should move like music, there should be a rhythm, and you can’t tell if you’re producing that unless you read it aloud.

David W. Berner: Well, as I said before, I had to work a bit on sensory language and internal dialogue. But broadcast writing is about getting to the point; it’s not flowery. It’s also about pulling it together quickly. My editor on Accidental Lessons could not believe I was able to do my rewrites so quickly. My experience with deadline pressure came in handy. So many of our best writers came from journalism — the most famous, of course, was Hemingway and he built an entire career on simple, direct language; short sentences that were rarely flowery or rambling.

Jerry Waxler: When finding the voice of a memoirist, how much did you have to unlearn or adjust from your previous writing style?

David W. Berner: Biggest thing was allowing my senses to come through in the work. Taking the time in print to find the small details of a moment. In broadcast writing, you don’t always have the time to do this, and when you want to do it, you have to think of simple ways to make it work. You can’t take a paragraph to describe a car crash. So word choice was crucial in broadcast. In print, you can take a little more space to flush out that detail. I had to work at that. But when I got it, I loved how it flowed. I think I’m much better at it now, but always working to improve it.

Jerry Waxler: What sort of research, workshops, or reading about memoir writing helped you shape your ideas about writing it.

David W. Berner: I’ll give you a long list of wonderful books. But first, I must again give Thomas E. Kennedy tons of writer love. He was essential in helping me find my voice, and tell my story. Not enough can be said about his input.

Here’s a list of books I found invaluable and still do. Some of them I’m sure many memoirists are familiar with and have used to help their own work.

Jerry Waxler: What sort of editing or feedback from beta readers or critique partners helped you pull the book together?

David W. Berner: That was a huge part of my MFA program at FDU. (Fairleigh-Dickenson University) I wouldn’t only get feedback from Thomas, but also from fellow students in the creative nonfiction program – extremely talented people. There were even a few poetry students that read my work, giving me great perspective on the creative use of language. But I also have to say that my ex-wife — (I hate that word, ex-wife) — was wonderfully perceptive about story. She had some on-the-money comments about structure in some of the small scenes she read along the way in the writing process.

But I must caution: as a writer you cannot take every piece of advice as a reason to act. Ultimately, YOU have to decide how to proceed with your story. If I had made all the adjustments to my manuscript that had been suggested to me, it would not have been my story in the end. It would have been theirs. But, I must credit Thomas again. My original first chapter became the fourth chapter and the first chapter was originally somewhere else in the first third of the manuscript. I thought that change was crucial to the storytelling.

David W. Berner changed directions in mid-life, and became a teacher. Then he wrote a memoir “Accidental Lessons” about how his second chance gave him a deeper appreciation for life than his first. The book is an important one for anyone who is attempting to reinvent themselves in order to keep up with changes in external circumstances or in their own goals. This is part one in my interview with him about writing the memoir.

Jerry Waxler: In Accidental Lessons, you were starting a new career and you were single for the first time in many years. In addition to being hurled back to the beginning of relationships and career, you are entering the early side of aging. For example, when looking to date, you had to come to terms with the problem that you were no longer such a young, vibrantly sexy man. At what point during these tumultuous changes did you decide to write a book about it? What motivated you to share these vulnerable aspects of your life with the public?

David Berner: I had been kicking around book ideas for a long time. As a journalist, I had been telling a lot of other people’s stories, but in recent years had been doing a good bit of immersion journalism and writing from the — I — perspective. I had written some essays and personal memoir pieces that had been published in a few small literary journals, but a book was a bigger project than I ever considered before. And since my journalism background made it difficult for me to “make things up” — I figured the best way to get a book done was to tell something of myself. But I had in no way planned on revealing the story of my year in the troubled school outside Chicago. Not until my sons encouraged it.

Each day I would return home from the classroom with stories, the kinds of stories my two sons — middle school and elementary — had never heard before: students talking openly about sex in class, and using the “F” word in every other sentence in front of the teachers. Most shocking, and interesting to them, were the students’ personal stories of their dysfunctional families, gang influences, and drugs. “Dad,” they said, “are you writing this down?” I hadn’t until then.

It was a month into my teaching assignment, one I had secured through a scholarship program that would allow me to get my Masters in Education degree as long as I agreed to work in a troubled-school for a period of time, so I had to catch up on some notes. But from there on out, for the entire year, I kept a journal. Some notes were quite detailed, some cryptic, but enough for me to remember the daily experiences. My journal entries included the facts, but they also included how I felt, what touched me, worried me, concerned me, the stuff below the skin where the emotions are raw.

If I was going to write an honest memoir about this experience, I better be honest about it all, every bit. The reader can spot a fake. Hemingway said a writer has to be a very good “shit detector.” Be authentic and the reader will connect. I was determined to do that. Besides my sons, the strongest motivator for me to tell the true story of my feelings and experiences was the desire to be a good, honest writer. To me, there was no other way to take on this project.

Jerry Waxler: It takes time to put together a whole story about your life, and along the way, there are unlimited number of opportunities to shrink back from the task, put it away in your drawer, and just consider it a good writing exercise. What sorts of internal discussions or external supports kept you pressing through the effort, to keep you going to the end?

David Berner: My sons were my motivators. They would ask me regularly, “How’s it going? What did you write about today?” I couldn’t disappoint them. And also, I knew from my journalism work that you had to set deadlines for yourself and you had to make time for writing, like going to the gym. Not just write when you felt like it, or when you had some time. You had to get up in the early morning, go out to a quiet coffee shop, sneak into a corner and write for hours. I did that a few days a week and every weekend, Saturday and Sunday mornings, for years.

When I entered my MFA program at Fairleigh Dickinson University, I had a third draft of a manuscript. Then the real work started and I a met my new motivator – Thomas E. Kennedy, an incredibly talented author. His most recent work of fiction is In the Company of Angels He was kind, honest, and relentless about getting me to really dig into using sensory language. I could tell a story — again, my journalism background — but I would miss opportunities to bring my senses into the deep introspective moments in the manuscript. He got me to go there. And as all memoirists know, the personal reflection on your story is as important as the story itself, if not more so. He encouraged me, told me I had a good story to tell, and believed I had the skills to tell it well. I can’t stress enough to writers of memoir that finding a mentor, someone who believes you have something vital to say, is absolutely essential. Self-doubt will creep in; it’s inevitable. But it shouldn’t stop you. Never.

David W. Berner, author of the memoir “Accidental Lessons” should have been satisfied with his successful career as a newscaster. Instead he hated chasing the latest sensational story in order to increase ratings. His distaste for his work infected his marriage. His wife couldn’t stand living in the shadow of this hollow man and so, they parted.

The memoir “Accidental Lessons” begins with the demolition of David W. Berner’s life and for the rest of the book, he builds himself up. He goes back to school to earn teaching credentials and he takes a job in a public high school. As a beginning teacher, he makes freshman mistakes with students, and when he tries to date a young woman, he behaves like an amateur there, too.

Can a beginner be a hero?

When I read a thriller, I expect the hero to know exactly what to do. However, I enjoy memoirs for the opposite reason. The protagonists of most memoirs are beginners whose journey is paved with mistakes. That’s the case in Coming of Age stories which are, by definition, about beginners. Children in blockbusters like Jeanette Walls in “Glass Castle” must make the journey from helplessness to adulthood. Readers cheer her, not because of her expertise, but because of her vulnerability.

Children are not the only beginners. Adults often find themselves starting over. Will readers cheer for older beginners, the way they do for young ones? David Berner’s memoir suggests that the answer is “yes.” His place at the bottom of the totem pole contrasts sharply with his success in broadcasting. And yet, as he bumbles along, trying to figure out how to make a positive impact on these kids, it is easy for me to cheer him on. I turn the pages, thinking, “Please grow.” “Please learn.”

Writing Prompt
In your own memoir, you might cringe at the mistakes and frustrations of starting over. Rediscovering these periods also highlights your courage. Write about a situation in your life that pushed you out of your comfort zone and forced you to take a new approach.

Writing Prompt
All memoir writers expose situations and emotions that most people keep hidden. We writers must learn new language arts. And we have to overcome reluctance and press on with tenacity. To get in touch with your vulnerability and courage, write a scene that shows you overcoming some emotional obstacle on your writing journey.

Second Coming of Age

At the beginning of the 21st century, more of us stay active well past the traditional retirement years. So how do we find meaning during our extended years? Stories like “Accidental Lessons” are perfect demonstrations of how such a “second act” can succeed.

David Berner’s new career is not just about regaining his earning power. In order to feel good about himself he needs to help young people feel good about themselves. He needs these kids as much as they need him. And even though as a new teacher he doesn’t know all the procedures of his position, he knows enough about life and love.

Through the memoir, he shows his sometimes-clumsy attempt to let his students understand he cares about them. In some cases his effort pays off, providing support to the kids and meaning to the teacher. I find the book to be a wonderful exploration of one man’s effort to create a more worthwhile life than the one he constructed the first time.

Teachers serve kids (and readers) in exchange for a sense of purpose

I love the fact that David Berner finds meaning through teaching. This is the third inspiring high-school teaching book I’ve read. The first two were “Teacher Man,” by Frank McCourt, and “Freedom Writer’s Diary” by Erin Gruell. In each of these books, an adult pours out information and support in the hope that children will grow. In exchange for their effort, they achieve their own sense of purpose.

Each of these teachers then wrested stories from their mundane experiences. By turning life into story, they created additional social value from their effort. I didn’t have to leave my home in order to vicariously experience their sense of purpose and uplift, and to learn more about my own years in a classroom, through the eyes of a teacher.

In the external world, David Berner traded in a glitzy career for an incredibly unglamorous one. However, inside himself and inside the kids, beautiful things were happening. Just as he filled himself up with his journey, by sharing it, he filled me up too.

Writing Prompt
What sorts of other new skills or crafts do you want to learn, “before it is too late”? Write a scene in which you are taking steps to achieve those goals.

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